TERRAFORMING TERRA
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A model farm template is imagined as the central methodology. A broad range of timely science news and other topics of interest are commented on.

Saturday, July 20, 2013

Getting Egypt Wrong

I too am nervously
optimistic that the Egyptian people are going to get a pluralistic
democratic state out of all this turmoil because it is becoming clear
that this is what they want and second, they are not fooled by
ideologues who they have suffered all their lives. After all, they
can see just how that works out elsewhere on the television daily.

It is already quite
clear that this second round of constitution making will be
transparent and will not be allowed to be hijacked. In the meantime,
the Egyptian Army is applying the lessons of 1933 Germany to the
Islamic Fascists.

If we do get a
legitimate constitution that is supported by the majority of the
Egyptian people, then we have the political resolution that allows
political evolution to proceed and economic development to properly
happen without necessarily been totally hijacked to a self appointed
elite.

As usual western
punditry is blinkered by historical dispensations which the Arab
people themselves now reject. They want the French Revolution
without the outright mismanagement and only as much bloodletting as
necessary to keep everyone honest.

Western
media coverage of the massive waves of protests in Egypt over the
past two days is revealing of a number of problems that plague
knowledge production about the Arab world.

As
crowds across the country were just warming up for the historic
protests, around midday on 30 June, reports from Cairo appearing on
Western broadcast and online news outlets focused on projecting an
image of “polarization.” Rallies opposing the Muslim Brotherhood
were represented as being balanced out, and in some cases even
outnumbered, by the demonstration in favor of President Mohamed
Morsi. The likelihood of violent clashes were carefully embedded
within the news as a main characteristic of the current political
situation in Egypt.

As
the day went by, the 30 June anti-Morsi demonstrations turned out to
probably be the largest ever in Egyptian history, with Egyptians from
all walks of life peacefully, yet audaciously, denouncing the
Brotherhood’s rule. In time for the evening news cycle in Europe
and morning newscasts in the United States, editors of printed and
online news outlets in the West started playing down their initial
“polarization” message and began to recognize the size of
dissidents as being truly unprecedented and in the millions.

The
Egyptian people’s defiance of Brotherhood rule is a serious popular
challenge to the most significant strategic reordering of the region
perhaps since the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916. Still, there was a
clear conservatism when it came to projecting the threat of such
show of force on Morsi’s own legitimacy. The 30 June
demonstrations were depicted merely as a significant sign of social
discontent that would bear few consequences on the
Washington-sponsored ruling coalition between the military and the
Brotherhood. In other words, media sent a message to Western
audiences that whereas the historical protests might look noble and
impressive, the only real political players in Egypt (and probably in
the Arab world as whole) are military generals and Islamists.

This
paradigm, forced through journalistic accounts, has been sponsored by
so-called Middle East “experts.” Those experts mold Western
perceptions of the Middle East from the comfort of their heftily
funded think tanks, and at times of trouble, like 30 June, they embed
themselves in London and Washington news studios, where they
broadcast their representations of the Middle East. As the Egyptian
army stepped up its game midday on Monday, and checkmated Morsi by
issuing a forty-eight-hour ultimatum to respond to the people’s
demands, these same media circuits started a concerted effort to
bring the “coup d’état” discourse, sometimes forcefully, to
the forefront of the discussion about events in Egypt.

The
failure of Western media and pundits to both recognize and project
the nuances of the current conflict in Egypt through their negligence
of people’s agency in shaping the political outcomes is both
pathetic and shameful. It is pathetic because it indicates the degree
to which Western intellectual circles—especially those profiteering
from Western policymaking bodies—remain willfully entrapped in an
outdated and out-of-touch Orientalist worldview of the region.

It
is both ironic and sad that while mediocre analysts, to say the least
of their understanding of the changing Middle East, make frequent
appearances in two-minute on-air interviews in newsrooms, the voices
of other academics and experts with serious research backgrounds and
true expertise of the region remain largely unheard. Serious analysts
are not in demand, not only because they have long overcome this
Orientalist paradigm in analyzing the politics of change in the
Middle East, but also because they don’t have the talent of
crafting those superficial, short, studio-made answers to questions
of news anchors.

The
attempt to contain the news discourse about the politics of change in
the Middle East over the past two and a half years in general and the
unfolding events of the past hours in Egypt specifically, within the
ready-made paradigm of military-Islamist turf wars, is also very
shameful.

The
insistence on ignoring the possibility of there being other factors
at play, quite frankly, conceals a deeply embedded fear by Western
powers, especially the US and Britain, of the emergence of a true
grassroots democratic alternative in the Arab world’s largest
country. Such an alternative would most certainly challenge the US
hegemony in the region, even if only by beginning to address
different possibilities regarding the future of Egypt, its people and
its regional state of affairs.

The
United States, Britain and many other counterparts have heavily
invested in the empowerment of a tamed Islamist rule—spearheaded,
of course, by the Muslim Brotherhood—to take over the Middle East
from post-colonial populist regimes living long past their expiry
dates. American and British ambassadors to the region have been
carefully weaving this vision and reporting back home that this is
simply the best formula for the protection of their interests in the
region.

That
such a formula would lend itself to the protraction of another cycle
of vicious human rights abuses and continued economic injustices is,
naturally, of little concern to them.

The
major turn of events that a defiant Egyptian populace led over the
past two days interrupts many plans, most especially the Western road
map of the region. The Egyptian people’s defiance of Brotherhood
rule is a serious popular challenge to the most significant strategic
reordering of the region perhaps since the Sykes-Picot Agreement of
1916.

This
is precisely why Western audiences are not being allowed to
sympathize with the demonstrations in Egypt demanding Morsi’s
ouster in the way they did with protests against former President
Hosni Mubarak in January 2011. Amid this grave misrepresentation of
the Egyptian revolution, the credibility and true independence of
mainstream Western media is being seriously put to question.

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About Me

18 years old, having cleaned out my HS library, I concluded the only ambition worth having was becoming a great genius. An inner voice cheered. Yet it is my path I have shared much to the Human Gesalt. Mar 2017 - 4.56 Mil Pg Views, March 2013 - Posted my paper introducing CLOUD COSMOLOGY & NEUTRAL NEUTRINO described as the SPACE TIME PENDULUM. Sep 2010 -My essay titled A NEW METRIC WITH APPLICATIONS TO PHYSICS AND SOLVING CERTAIN HIGHER ORDERED DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS has been published in Physics Essays(AIP) June 2010 quarterly. 40 years ago I took an honors degree in applied mathematics from the University of Waterloo. My interest was Relativity and my last year there saw me complete a 900 level course under Hanno Rund on his work in Relativity. I continued researching new ideas and knowledge since that time and I have prepared a book for publication titled Paradigms Shift. I maintain my blog as a day book and research tool to retain data, record impressions, interpretations and to introduce new insights to readers.